> Therefore they can afford to pay more for the ad spots than someone without that data, who gets less precisely targeted ads, and fewer product sales per adver

> Therefore they can afford to pay more for the ad spots than someone without that data, who gets less precisely targeted ads, and fewer product sales per advertisement shown. Isn't this fundamentally an argument to outsource a greater portion of ad creation and campaigns, or parts thereof, to Google? Google isn't just the best ad platform, it's likely the smartest user of that ad platform, and has the automation/ML chops to be the fastest and most competent user of that platform.... To my business eyes that sounds like a company that can offer services deeper into the advertising value chain than 'just' hosting the ad-canvas. On the flip side, even as the #1 advertising company in the world it's still darned hard for Google to be the #1 Shoe Manufacturing company in the world at the same time. If that dynamic holds then Googles growth in this area should be a massive threat to advertising agencies to the collective benefit of businesses in the rest of the market who can leverage their services more efficiently, n'est pas?